RIP. It still suprises me that people with resources die so early (he died at 74).
I wouldnt consider 74 early.
Bill Atkinson has died
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Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#22One of my favourite Atkinson stories -- I can't remember if this is on folklore.org or somewhere else -- is that he actually implemented editable text in MacPaint, by scanning the bitmap for character shapes, but chose not to ship that feature because it could never be perfect. Amazing technical skill and great taste and judgement.
Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#23If you haven't, check out the documentary[0] on General Magic which Bill co-founded in 1990. Among the more remarkable scenes in there is when a member of the public seems perplexed by the thought that they would even want to "check email from Times Square."
An unthinkable future, but they thought it. And yet, most folks have never heard of General Magic.
Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#24https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Atkinson
Bill on Steve Jobs and HyperCard:
https://youtu.be/kzKCZN3UsRQ?si=eNIsysWdrjp2tHwd
Black bar, please.
Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#25RIP. It still suprises me that people with resources die so early (he died at 74).
Bill pushed himself to his limits. I saw this first hand at General Magic, and heard the stories about the development of the Macintosh. People can wear themselves out.
Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#26RIP. It still suprises me that people with resources die so early (he died at 74).
> RIP. It still suprises me that people with resources die so early (he died at 74).
You don't know for how long he did have that disease, if anything, resources might have afforded him many more years of life at first place.So your comment strikes me as odd, given the fact that you can't judge how long did he live with such disease.
One of my friend's dad died from the same kind of cancer. Between the diagnosis and their death, 2 months passed, and that person had plenty of "resources"...
Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#27In an alternate timeline, HyperCard was not allowed to wither and die, but instead continued to mature, embraced the web, and inspired an entire genre of software-creating software. In this timeline, people shape their computing experiences as easily as one might sculpt a piece of clay, creating personal apps that make perfect sense to them and fit like a glove; computing devices actually become (for everyone, not ju…
I haven't posted it here yet b/c it's not show ready, but we have been building this vision -- I like to think of it as an e-bike for the mind.
We had a lot of fun last night with Vibecode Karaoke, where you code an app at the same time as you sing a song.
Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#28One of my favourite Atkinson stories -- I can't remember if this is on folklore.org or somewhere else -- is that he actually implemented editable text in MacPaint, by scanning the bitmap for character shapes, but chose not to ship that feature because it could never be perfect. Amazing technical skill and great taste and judgement.
Here's the story - https://folklore.org/MacPaint_Evolution.html
Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#29In an alternate timeline, HyperCard was not allowed to wither and die, but instead continued to mature, embraced the web, and inspired an entire genre of software-creating software. In this timeline, people shape their computing experiences as easily as one might sculpt a piece of clay, creating personal apps that make perfect sense to them and fit like a glove; computing devices actually become (for everyone, not ju…
It’s ironic that the next graphical programming environment similar to Hypercard was probably Flash - and it obviously died too.
What actually are the best successors now, at least for authoring generic apps for the open web? (Other than vibe coding things)
Re: Bill Atkinson has died
#30Some notable stories from Folklore.org: https://www.folklore.org/Joining_Apple_Computer.html https://www.folklore.org/Negative_2000_Lines_Of_Code.html --- something to bring up whenever lines of code as a metric is put forward https://www.folklore.org/Rosings_Rascals.html --- story of how the Macintosh Finder came to be https://www.folklore.org/I_Still_Remember_Regions.html --- surviving a car accident
The lines of code story is a timeless classic.
Score code on line count and runtime golf. Shorter, faster, and fastest time to completion is best.
Code that’s 4K and took slightly less time to write but runs slightly faster than code that’s 400 bytes that took another 30m to write still doesn’t get the best score.